


Siege

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 14:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6119209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't only Vikings who have stubbornness issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Siege

**Author's Note:**

> Holiday cardfic. Ahouseforrain requested: Sydney - opposition.

The city walls were high and sheer, the gates tight-shut, and Illusion wouldn't unbar them when the guards' orders were to kill anyone who tried to leave, even if it looked like their own mother. Even if it looked like the prince himself.

Hanging back in the shadows, just out of range of the archers, Ashley counted the guards with a thoughtful eye and weighed his options carefully.

"There's a spell that would let you walk through those walls," a soft voice murmured into his ear, the prickling of the Rood Inverse across his back his only warning that someone had leaned in close. "Or lift you right over them. I could teach you, if you like."

"No," he said, not looking back, knowing that voice only too well.

"It wouldn't be difficult," Sydney assured him, amusement lilting his words.

"It's also not necessary."

"No?"

"No."

Before Sydney could argue with him further, the very signal both Ashley and the gate guards had been praying for rang out from beyond the walls: the brassy ring of trumpets echoing in advance of the thunder of hooves. With it came a curious glow, too pale for torchlight, the city banners and the bright livery of the men stationed on the battlements leached to nothing-colors as the odd light played over the walls.

"It's the Blades!" an archer shouted from the heights. "Open the gates!"

He told himself that Sydney must have moved away, that the sword he pulled from his back hadn't passed _through_ the man, but he didn't stop to look. Sydney no longer had any need to worry where blades of any sort were concerned, but Ashley was a different matter.

When the gates swung open on a full troop of the Church's soldiers, the priest at the forefront maintaining a Light spell as if that parlor trick was a holy mandate from Iocus himself, Ashley didn't hesitate.

If the Church was going to do half the work of winning him free from their own trap, who was he to argue?

***

"That doesn't look good," Sydney informed him hours later, peering with a frown at the gash over Ashley's left eye.

"It's nothing," he said, dipping his hands into the basin on the sagging dresser--then freezing, jerking his gaze up to the mirror in surprise. Spotty and age-tarnished, the greyed image staring back at him was his own: stripped to the waist and marked with fading cuts and bruises. Behind him stood the ramshackle room he'd taken for the night...and there at his side was Sydney, just as he'd been the last time Ashley had seen him in the flesh, though he shouldn't properly have had a reflection at all.

"I could heal that for you," Sydney offered, oddly perplexed, "since you don't seem to be--"

"It's fine. Head wounds always look worse than they are," he found himself explaining, ducking quickly to splash his face. Ghosts never showed in mirrors, not that he'd ever seen...but ghosts didn't look like Sydney, either, so real Ashley sometimes forgot the man was dead.

The shock of cold water didn't help. When he glanced up at the mirror again after drying his face, Sydney's frown had sharpened.

Something determined came into Sydney's face, stiffened his spine, which made it odd when his voice dropped to a purr. "But Riot," he said, slinking closer with deliberate grace as Ashley straightened in a hurry, dropping the threadbare towel to the floor. "It'd be such a shame," he murmured, "to mar that lovely face."

Sydney was all but breathing his words against Ashley's lips, because Ashley hadn't given ground and Sydney hadn't hung back, even once he saw that Ashley wouldn't be shifted. He was so close, Ashley could feel the faint chill Sydney radiated, could see the flecks of true silver in intent grey eyes, glittering like nothing natural. Sydney's smile as Ashley remained silent was a slow invitation, but those eyes remained watchful, filled with purpose rather than hunger.

When Sydney leaned in that last fraction more, at the first brush of his mouth, Ashley reached up automatically to take him by the shoulders, setting him back at arm's length.

That...shouldn't be possible.

And of all things, Sydney shouldn't look so... _pleasantly surprised_.

"What...I thought you were dead," Ashley accused, letting go of Sydney to fist his hands at his sides.

A pale brow arched as Sydney shrugged, but his growing half-smile was amused again. "I am. What of it?"

"You...."

"The _incomplete death_ , Riot. Do keep up."

"You don't look very incomplete to me," Ashley growled.

Sydney's smile went wicked, his eyes heavy-lidded, as he said, "And yet you've hardly made a thorough examination."

Ashley scowled as Sydney tried to close the gap a second time, lifting a hand and stiffening his arm as Sydney walked right into his palm and pushed like he expected Ashley to relent. He wasn't sure what to make of the flicker in Sydney's eyes when Ashley pushed him back a second time; Sydney _knew_ him. Surely he wasn't surprised his own stubbornness had met its match.

"No?" Sydney asked lightly, eyes wavering briefly to Ashley's mouth. It was the first time Ashley could remember Sydney's unsettlingly direct stares ever deviating from his at all.

"I'll take your word for it," he ground out through a clenched jaw, glaring at Sydney still. It was odd; when he'd believed the man to be a true ghost, it had seemed...petty to balk at Sydney's presence, and when he wasn't being played against every side of the board by the one man who knew the game entire, Sydney's caustic irreverence hadn't troubled him at all. Apparently he'd been a fool to think Sydney had stopped surprising him with secrets.

What he couldn't understand was why Sydney, willfully balked, only looked gratified by Ashley's contrariness.

"Well, then," Sydney said cheerfully, "if that's all you'll have, you're welcome to it. But as I wouldn't have you think me ungenerous...."

He growled impatiently as he felt magic settle around him at a casual flick of Sydney's claws, but Sydney blew apart in a cloud of snowflies before Ashley could decide to push him further away or grab him and shake him. It didn't even occur to him to wonder what Sydney had done.

He didn't have to glance in the mirror to know that all his wounds had been healed.

***

He had no great love of the ocean, it was true. Or boats. Or storms when there was no land in sight, only endless miles of waves whipped to a frenzy as the wind howled in the rigging. But surely that was no cause to gloat.

"I could help with that," Sydney mused, standing with suspect grace in the middle of the cabin as the ship rolled under them. Perched at the edge of the berth, gripping white-knuckled to the bedframe and hoping it was bolted down sturdily, Ashley grimaced at him, half-afraid to open his mouth. Gods, that was tempting. "Or if that sounds too permanent," Sydney offered with a private little smile, "I could simply distract you."

Ashley glared, incredulous. Was Sydney actually suggesting--?

No. When _wasn't_ Sydney suggesting? That would be the better question.

"Sydney."

"Hm?"

"Let me drown," Ashley begged in all seriousness. "As a personal favor."

Sydney laughed, which Ashley didn't think he remotely deserved, but he'd forgive the bastard for it.

Though the chanciness of his stomach remained his own problem, the seas settled down quickly after that, as if soothed by a comforting hand.

***

_'No?'_ became Sydney's favorite question; Ashley had no idea why it was also what Sydney liked best to hear in reply. Unless it was just that he'd heard it so rarely.

Even without the touch of the Dark to make his charisma dangerous, Sydney wielded seduction like a weapon, every sidelong look, every low, shivery purr a calculated attack. Ashley had fought stranger opponents, but it wasn't Sydney's half-goading invitations he had to guard himself against.

It was Sydney's scholarly delight when they uncovered a forgotten library in the depths of some old ruin, the bright swoop of his laughter when Ashley gave back some dry comment to one of his more outrageous suggestions, the way he sometimes seemed entirely at peace for no reason at all when he was nothing but restless energy anchored to a too-compelling shell.

It wasn't that Ashley didn't want him. That had never been in question.

It was just that he didn't know how to make it more than a losing engagement in whatever one-sided war Sydney was fighting, was starting to suspect that Sydney was just as lost as he was.

***

He didn't look up when the cushions dipped beside him, continuing to run his whetstone over the fine old blade he'd acquired just that morning from a man who'd owed them a favor. He knew what he would see, besides. For all that Sydney was pure Valendian--the son of a duke, no less--he'd taken to the Rozarrians' hedonistic ways with a will. Sydney never sat when he could drape himself to be admired, and their adopted country's bohemian furnishings only encouraged him.

Which was why Ashley did look over with a start when he saw Sydney lean forward out of the corner of his eye, silver elbows braced on his knees, claws laced carelessly together.

"Well," Sydney said, smiling but oddly subdued. "I suppose there's no question, then. You truly are immune."

"To which?" He was immune to a lot of things these days. The Dark had a tendency towards thoroughness.

"Me," Sydney said, mouth quirking at the corners, for once not an invitation to anything. "Or to the drawing of the Dark, I suppose. I thought you might be."

Ashley frowned, his hands falling still. So Sydney's knack of compulsion was still intact. He wondered who Sydney had tested it on to be certain, then forced himself to stop wondering.

"Are you disappointed?" he asked carefully, wondering why Sydney's pleasure in that fact seemed to have deserted him, though it couldn't be said he wasn't _pleased_.

Sydney's laugh was quick and startled, his smile brightening at the reminder. "No. Not at all. I just...." He chewed his lip a moment, looking so startlingly _normal_ Ashley couldn't tear his eyes away. He'd seen Sydney mulling over plots and fighting for their lives, reordering the very universe with his words or with his magic, but he'd never seen Sydney uncertain, fumbling his way towards understanding rather than trying to wrest what he wanted from the world around him by any means necessary.

Ashley laid aside his sword, the whetstone following. "Sydney?"

Sydney glanced down with a frown as Ashley's fingertips brushed his knee, but when he looked up, his eyes were calm. Honest, Ashley would have said, except that Sydney was always honest; it was what he omitted that one had to be wary of.

"Ashley," Sydney replied slowly, searching his face with a thoughtful frown. "What would I...is there any possible way that you would change your answer?"

Ashley had to smile, hearing the question Sydney had aborted, liking the one he'd settled on in the end. "You could try asking," he suggested, unable to resist.

Sydney gave him a dumbfounded look, but not, Ashley thought, because Sydney was under any illusion that that was what he'd been doing all along. More that he couldn't believe it would be that easy, like a thief who'd spent an entire evening trying to pick a lock that had never been set in the first place.

"Yes?" Sydney asked with an amused little grin, no kin at all to the hungry looks he aimed like siege engines at anything that stood in his path.

"Yes," Ashley said, watching Sydney's eyes brighten, not in victory but relief.


End file.
